PHOTOMETRY’S BRIGHT FUTURE: DETECTING SOLAR SYSTEM ANALOGS WITH FUTURE SPACE TELESCOPES

Time-series transit photometry from the Kepler space telescope has allowed for the discovery of thousands of exoplanets. We explore the potential of yet improved future missions such as PLATO 2.0 in detecting solar system analogs. We use real-world solar data and end-to-end simulations to explore the stellar and instrumental noise properties. By injecting and retrieving planets, rings, and moons of our own solar system, we show that the discovery of Venus and Earth analogs transiting G dwarfs like our Sun is feasible at high signal-to-noise ratio after collecting 6 yr of data, but Mars and Mercury analogs will be difficult to detect owing to stellar noise. In the best cases, Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons will be detectable even in single-transit observations. Through the high number (>1 billion) of observed stars by PLATO 2.0, it will become possible to detect thousands of single-transit events by cold gas giants, analogs to our Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Our own solar system aside, we also show, through signal injection and retrieval, that PLATO 2.0 class photometry will allow for the secure detection of exomoons transiting quiet M dwarfs. This is the first study analyzing in depth the potential of future missions and the ultimate limits of photometry, using realistic case examples.